"I am a property owner in a rural ranch area west of Tucson and 30 klicks from Sasabe, Arizona and the Mexican Border.
I spent 30 years as a U.S. Border Patrol Agent, Aircraft Pilot and Criminal Investigator with DOJ. Through the early years, we controlled the territory until Politics and Carpetbaggers in D.C. dictated open borders policies and mindless agendas which '"hamstrung'" an effective agency... Politicians from both parties in Congress, in pandering for Votes and Cheap labor and refusing to revamp an inept Immigration Service, created a different caste of border crossers who care nothing for the laws of the U.S. nor property rights, and upon reaching interior cities are basically 'home free'.

If the government will not protect taxpayers, property owners from constant invasions from Mexico, citizens must rely on their own resources."

"Earlier this month a plainspoken gentleman of Arizona named Chris Simcox announced that a citizens' group he founded - the Tombstone Militia - was about to undertake the function of protecting his state's and the country's borders from invasion.

In Arizona illegal immigrants continue to pour across the borders in numbers undiminished by or since Sept. 11, 2001. While the federal government has responded to the 9/11 attacks by conquering Afghanistan, threatening war against Iraq, creating a vast new agency to fight terrorism and unleashing the security and intelligence communities with enhanced powers, it has done almost nothing to control or reduce immigration.

That's why Mr. Simcox is going to war - or, more accurately, non-war. 'It is a monumental disgrace,' he told the Washington Times, 'that our government is letting the American people down, turning us into the expendable casualties of the war on terrorism.'"

"A series of attacks on rangers, including the fatal shooting in August of a ranger at Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and a scathing report on problems in the Interior Department's law enforcement structure have officials looking at changes aimed at protecting rangers and park visitors.

Today's rangers are armed, in some cases with M-16s. But they remain spread thin, with fewer than 1,400 patrolling 84 million acres in 387 parks, monuments and historic sites that attract more than 400 million visitors annually."

The National Park Service is proposing to build a vehicle barrier along the Arizona-Mexico border in an area where a ranger was killed in August... A similar barrier would be built along the southern edge of Coronado National Memorial.

Randall Kendrick, the executive director of the U.S. Park Ranger Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the proposal is good but late. "It should have been done years ago."

"Nowhere is the situation more pressing than in Organ Pipe Cactus, spanning 30 miles of the Arizona-Mexico border, where rugged bluffs and gentle slopes have become a war zone known for both drug and people smuggling."

"Organ Pipe Cactus Superintendent Bill Wellman calls it a looming catastrophe. 'We've lost most of our wilderness characteristics already, and within the last two years, we've started hearing comments from visitors about resource damage,' he says. 'If the situation doesn't improve, I would suspect that within ten years we'll reach a state of impairment by anybody's definition.'"

The Tohono O'Odham Nation faces an environmental crisis. Every day, nearly 1,500 undocumented immigrants [illegal aliens] pass through the U.S.'s second largest indian reservation, leaving thousands of pounds of trash on tribal lands.

Some sacred areas on the Tohono O'Odham Indian reservation larger than the size of a football field are littered with thousands of pounds of trash left behind by illegal border crossers...

Ramon says his people shouldn't be left with the burden of dealing with the mounds of trash. The Tohono O'Odham Nation shares a 71-mile-border with Mexico. Ramon says it's a federal border so it's also a problem of the federal government.

The Tohono O'Odham Nation is the second largest reservation in the country, with a population of 22,000. Nearly 2,000 tribal members live south of the border.

Border crossers enter the reservation from Mexico on foot, and form makeshift camps near major pickup points for coyotes, or undocumented immigrant [illegal alien] smugglers.

Carrasco adds, "They get to here (a spot about 30 miles north of the Sonora/Arizona border), and basically from here is where they're gonna load up. So, they don't need the extra clothes and water jugs. They leave trash here, because there's no where to put it as they get loaded up."...

Tohono O'Odham officials estimate each undocumented immigrant [illegal alien] leaves behind more than 8 pounds of litter. With nearly 1,500 crossing tribal lands every day, that amounts to 13,000 thousand pounds a day, and almost 5 million pounds a year.

Number of crossers caught in Az. doublesBy Luke Turf, Tucson Citizen, November 29, 2002
"On his Douglas ranch, Roger Barnett also has noticed an increase in illegal immigrant activity.
Barnett, 60, is a member of the American Border Patrol... He said he caught 47 illegal immigrants and turned them over to Border Patrol in October 2001. Barnett said he caught 215 last month."

"He said he hasn't seen a Border Patrol helicopter patrol in six months.
'What's this government doing?' Barnett asked...
'It's unbelievable how many people get by because the Border Patrol doesn't stop them,' he said."

"Every day, nearly 1,500 undocumented immigrants [illegal aliens] pass through the U.S.'s second largest indian reservation... Some sacred areas on the Tohono O'Odham Indian reservation larger than
the size of a football field are littered with thousands of pounds of
trash left behind by illegal border crossers."

"Almost every day through the marijuana harvest season, which recently
ended, federal agents and the local police descended on the increasingly
large pot farms in California's national forests, looking for the
growers and their possible connections to Mexican drug traffickers."

" 'The Mexican cartels have taken over the industry, and when they do
something, they don't do it in small amounts,' said Sonya Arriaga Barna,
operations commander for a California Department of Justice task force... The
Drug Enforcement Agency says that 935,680 plants, worth about $3.7
billion on the street, were seized in California this summer and early
fall, the most ever."

" 'The majority of these growers are armed, and that poses a threat if
someone is hiking or camping in the wilderness,' Mr. Delaney said. While
no campers or hikers are known to have been harmed, several law
enforcement officers have been injured in shootouts."

Chaos along the borderThe Washington Times, October 6, 2002
"On any given day, 10,000 illegal aliens will cross the U.S.-Mexican border. About one in three will be caught and expelled. Among those who succeed, nearly half will become permanent U.S. residents. The vast majority of those who are caught will try again, frequently the very next day.

Today, record numbers of illegal aliens find their way to the United States, whose estimated illegal alien population is between 9 million and 11 million, or double the 1994 level.

An estimated 80 percent of the cocaine and 50 percent of the heroin consumed throughout the United States will enter through the U.S.-Mexican border.
The drug cartels spend about $500 million annually buying the cooperation and assistance of Mexico's corrupt generals and police officials."

Border rancher fights to stem flood of aliensby Jerry Seper, The Washington Times, September 25, 2002
"It was 1998 when Roger Barnett first began to notice the trash and the tracks.
His 22,000-acre Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, 50 miles east of here, had become a major route for illegal aliens headed out of Mexico. The ranch sits in what Cochise County authorities call 'the avenue of choice' for illegal immigration."

" 'Thousands of aliens have crossed my property,' said Mr. Barnett, a businessman here. 'There are so many that I can tell you that at times it looks like a slow motion invasion.'
Mr. Barnett, 59, began rounding up illegal aliens after he said they started to vandalize his property, northeast of Douglas along Highway 80. He said the aliens tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks, and broke into his home."

"His actions at the ranch also have made him a target of immigrant smugglers and drug smugglers in Mexico. Law-enforcement authorities told him the smugglers had placed a bounty on his head. 'This is my land. I'm the victim here,' Mr. Barnett said."

'We are overwhelmed'by Jerry Seper, The Washington Times, September 24, 2002
Every month, more than 50,000 illegal aliens cross the Tohono O'odham Nation reservation. The second largest Indian reservation in the United States is facing a crisis.

Thin green line takes a new strategyby Jerry Seper, The Washington Times, September 23, 2002 "Everyone tells you about Douglas, but until you actually see it for yourself, there's no way you're going to believe what's happening down here," said Willie Barber, a field operations supervisor at the Douglas station.
"It seems that when the sun goes down, someone flips a switch and yells, 'Go,'" he said.

Many people don't remember the lawlessness on the border in San Ysidro, Otay Mesa and the Tijuana River Valley about a decade ago... Police fought firefights with gangs of bandits in canyons and dense underbrush...
San Ysidro residents locked themselves in at night as smugglers and immigrants traipsed through their yards. Caches of drugs were carried across the border by smugglers and the people they were leading. Hundreds of illegal immigrants lingered in the median strip of Interstate 5 waiting for rides northward.

Then came Operation Gatekeeper, and the chaos stopped.
Unless, that is, you live in or around the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation in southern Arizona, where the smuggling of immigrants and drugs has created chaos... The worst of it, however, is that the Tohono Nation has been turned into a war zone and the adjacent Organ Pipe National Monument is being irreparably damaged.

If Gatekeeper ceased, the chaos might simply move back to San Ysidro...
Instead of less Gatekeeper, we need more Gatekeeper. The Tohono Nation desperately needs it. In these days when homeland security is the No. 1 topic in Washington,
it's unbelievable that such a lawless situation is allowed to exist on our borders.

Fair Use: This site contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of issues related to mass immigration. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information, see: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html.In order to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.